Real Lone Ranger Rides Again

SOMETIMES, justice triumphs over evil, a wrong is redressed and the good guy in the white hat does win in the end.

Just ask actor Clayton Moore. The man who portrayed the Lone Ranger in a 1950s TV show and two movies has just belatedly won the legal right to wear the Lone Ranger mask in public once again.

A Los Angeles judge had banned his appearance in the mask in 1979 after the Wrather Corp., which owns the rights to the fictional cowboy character, sued Moore. Wrather officials wanted no public confusion between Moore and Klinton Spilsbury, the young actor who portrayed the character in a 1981 film.

In a delicious irony, Spilsbury was booed at public appearances, his performance was widely panned and the film flopped at the box office, while the unmasked Moore became an instant hit with many new fans who believed that nobody could replace the real thing.

The Wrather Corp.`s insulting claim that Moore, now 70, was too old, too wrinkled and too out of shape to be associated with the Lone Ranger was transparently preposterous to anyone who saw Moore on TV last week. Moore, a onetime circus aerialist and TV stuntman, accomplished horseman and outdoorsman, has kept trim and athletic in appearance. The age lines may be there, but Moore is still clearly the living embodiment not only of the Lone Ranger character, but the principles for which he stands -- honesty, justice, decency and self-sacrifice.